Best Routine of Week 6 Poll

Congratulations to our week 5 champion, Maddie Gardiner’s beam, which used a campaign boost from Oregon State to cruise to victory over Britney Ward’s vault in second and Kiana Winston’s floor in third. The race for third was close, with Winston’s floor just edging Price’s bars and Nichols’ beam.

To the vote for week 6, a week replete with 10 after 10 after 10. After 10. After 10.

So, welcome to perfect score week! This week, the nominees are all the routines that received either 10.000 or 9.975 over the weekend, and it’s your job to rank them from most-deserving to least-deserving routine by way of your vote.

(There were nine routines that fit this criterion, and since I usually do ten nominees, I added Preston’s vault, which did also technically receive a perfect score of 9.950.)

Peng Peng Lee well deserved. I have a hard time with the other scores. I thought AJ Jackson and the chalk blowing was supposed to be penalized??? Hundley misses two handstands at vertical at least from the camera angle provided. Sometimes I feel like UCLA throws every big trick, but with some flaws, and do get the scores some days; however, each gymnast is like a ticking time bomb for a major injury. The low floor landings by UCLA are concerning for the gymnasts’ health.

Peng’s amazing routine getting a 10 is cheapened by Kyla and Maddie’s scores the same rotation… although she did fling out her dismount a little, her difficulty is amazing unique and PERFECTLY executed!

I gotta go with Peng this week. Here’s why:
It seems this week the question is “who deserves the highest score?” as opposed to “which routine is the most fabulous?” (which is sometimes how I vote)
Peng’s bars has it all. Yes, the DLO is flung out, but is that even a deduction? I’m also not sure from that camera angle about the last handstand, so I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.
Nichols floor – first tumbling pass didn’t show complete control, there was momentum in that step back. Also, though improved, leg sep in the full in.
Hundly and Kocian bars – as previously noted, last handstand quite short, and leg sep all over the place in the releases. Funny, their routine composition and execution are almost identical, save for Kocian’s stalder before the dismount and stalder entry to shaposhes.
Ohashi – visible balance checks after flight series and full turn, questionable splits in leaps. I would be ok with giving difficulty bump for a 9.9 for this set, which would still be generous. 9.975 – just no.
Slocum vault – so good until the landing, which was not a controlled stick.
Jackson floor – last pass step back.
McMurtry bars – last handstand short (shame on you Kathy Johnson for protractoring the earlier handstands and praising the perfection)
Kyla bars – last handstand. Even whats-his-name saw that it was short. Also, form on release not as tight as we have seen from her.
Preston vault – looks pretty perfect to me. What am I missing, guys? I’d give her second place.

It wasn’t AS awesome but she still has very good amplitude. I’m not sure I agree that every single gymnast except the one with the single biggest FTY should cap out at 9.9. That’s a fair argument for NCAAs, when things are head to head, but not so much the regular season.

I didn’t go with Peng Pengs Bars just because she always gets her feet successively on the bar and although I know it’s no deduction, I hate that. (just like Kyla – why??) The rest is beautiful, especially her Bhardwaji is amazing and her handstand positions are great.

I vote for Peng in 1st, and McMurtrey in a close 2nd. However – this is one of the most egregious weeks for overscores, based on these videos.
Katelyn Ohashi – HUGE props for landing her series (that’s crazy!) But she lands her layout full piked over, she wobbles out of a full turn, and has a check coming out of her front walkover. Should be a 9.85 max, and someone gave a perfect 10??
Maggie – beautiful, brilliant gymnast, but she bounces out of her first pass. WTF?
AJ – LOVE her attitude and style and the routine is solid, but where’s the chalk deduction? Bullshit, I say.
Hundley – 3 leg separations, 2 short handstands, and a shuffle on the dismount, but sure, why not a 9.975?
What is wrong with these judges?? It’s shit like this that pisses me off and turns off casual fans.

You think it turns off casual fans? I’m not so sure. If they don’t have the eye for deductions, see a stick (or what passes for a stick in their eyes), won’t they just be excited by 10’s and get more turned on to the sport? Any casual fans reading this that want to chime in?

I agree with Robin. I started as a “casual fan” as a student at UGA. I didn’t know anything about the sport and only watched gymnastics once every four years (like most of my classmates at UGA). The meets were awesome and truly only second to football in terms of crowd and energy — and when Alabama came to town it was only crazier.

We didn’t know enough to notice every little flaw. We noticed stuck landings, amplitude, and you learn quickly to notice handstands. Tiny form errors didn’t matter to most fans in attendance. And all high scores 9.95-10, especially, were exciting for the fans. A person may know very little about gymnastics, but the “perfect 10” they know. Whether it’s justified doesn’t matter (unless it’s the opposing team).

Trust me, a bunch of 10s and high scores fills the arena. College is different than elite and I find it so much more exciting.

Also, the casual fan focus on the win/loss and not the total score. A win over a rival, even if it’s a bad meet, is still awesome for the student.

Also, as an example of winning making a difference to students — Ohio State’s early season victory over Michigan received a lot of coverage in the Ohio State media. Mattern was recently profiled on a well-known Buckeye sports site. Gymnastics isn’t normally a big women’s sport of OSU, but the Michigan victory brought attention. A loss, even with the same score, wouldn’t have that type of impact.

As for AJ’s chalkography, it is fitting that she keeps it even after the deduction is announced. She is, after all, portraying a rebel graffiti artist, so her rebellion to the nonsense of this rule is fitting. I’d love to be a fly on the wall of that discussion between her and KJ.
As for the deduction, I’m ambivalent about them not taking it.

Just a thought on the chalk deduction, though please feel free to correct me if you know more about this than I do because I have not seen the actual rule, I’ve only read on the internet that the rule is against “excessive use of chalk” in floor routines. If this is the case, that deduction is highly subjective, and I can really understand why most judges would feel that AJ’s routine doesn’t merit the deduction. I could see judges saying that “excessive use” is use of chalk beyond what naturally adheres to the body without making a mess and sprinkling everywhere as the gymnast goes about her routine. Since AJ’s choreography involves movement in which her hand is open and her palm is facing down before the chalk blowing happens, and there is no visible sprinkling of chalk during the time when her hand is open and palm down, you could very reasonably say that her chalk use is not excessive. Vivi Babalis, on the other hand, would probably have been found to be in violation of this rule by nearly every judge if she hadn’t taken the chalk drop out of her routine considering she was holding the chalk in a closed hand and it made a visible pile on the floor when dropped. Basically, my interpretation is: “If you want to use a reasonable amount of chalk that might normally be used even if chalk throwing, blowing, etc. were not part of your routine, go ahead. If your chalk choreography requires you to use far more chalk than a person would normally use, that is excessive.”

Again, I don’t actually know any of this to be true, I just feel like this would be a reasonable interpretation of that rule.